Hi Barry,
Sorry for long meesage,
I will give you a real example which I experienced that includes my request regarding a WG ietf draft that has no presenter but two people in the WG that want discuss it in meetings as below real story. I want to confirm my statement of hidden discuss/information related to IETF work, because there are intentions/encourages by some to do hidden meetings, and hidden reviews (they are acknowledged in draft with reviews that are not listed or hidden, on the other hand, once I have not been acknowledged-listed when I published my review even), however, I think it can be fixed in future. I am not against the side meeting but against not documenting information (excluding side info, and reviews, and comments, that change the work we are doing).
A live WG example in IETF is for this Berline-meeting: A request for discussion was raised [1] by a participant that will attend, and I (as remote-meeter) support for that request that I did raise [2]. The author suggested that he has no presentation and would like time within the week (i.e. I understand it was side meeting) to discuss with that attended participant [3] (as hidden meeting, but still no reply to the remote requester, was that remote participant discouraged, maybe). However, it was nice that the first discuss-requester has added request to only do discussions in WG meeting (not side meetings) [4].
My comment we need to encourage the discussions to be done in the IETF, and even if we done a discussion in a side meeting as per your examples, we SHOULD quickly write it down into the IETF lists (as some participants do, e.g. the chair's article of diversity done this month). My addition comments below,
AB
On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Barry Leiba <barryleiba@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> The most valuable part of IETF meeting is and has always been the hall
>> conversations and side meetings
>
> I think *side meetings* are killing IETF, I call it *hidden meetings*, thereI have no argument with your last sentence; it's absolutely correct.
> is no input for IETF when we have side meetings. The input to IETF in
> through meeting sessions and discussion lists.
But I think you misunderstand the point Donald is making about things
such as small hallway conversations.
Example: A few people get together in a corner and one says, "About
that point I made on the list that you brushed off... here's what I'm
talking about:", and five or ten minutes of discussion ensues. At the
end, either the guy with the point now understands why he's wrong (or
why his point isn't practical), or the document editor says, "OK, I
get your point now. Let me work up some proposed text and post it to
the list."
In this example, they (discussion team) should add the result of discussion into the IETF WG lists, they should document it
Example: A few people get together during a session time they have
free, and they bash out some text to resolve an issue that came up.
They come to the working group meeting session with an explanation of
their conversation and the proposed text, and it's discussed in the
meeting session (and posted to the list afterward).
In this example, they should document the result of discussion and the event into the IETF WG lists (if they think useful).
Example: Someone has an idea for a new document or other new work, so
he gathers some people to have breakfast one morning, explains his
idea, bashes it around with his colleagues, and as a result of that
breakfast chat he goes home after the IETF meeting and writes up an
Internet Draft.
So the result is already an input draft, IMHO, that side meeting is respected by IETF because it is a usual birth of any draft/idea. That side meeting is not hidden, but also not related to any IETF document. I was arguing discuss that are related to IETF document which has a value that will direct the IETF draft.
None of this is hidden; none of this is secret. It's all the way work
gets done efficiently: a small group of people crack some tough nuts,
and present the results to a wider audience.
When the discussion is done or encouraged by human habit to make it in a special TEAM, I will say it is SECRET, as long as it ended there. I hope our diversity team is not secret because still I seem not to know what is happening there, nothing is announced on their lists regarding targets. Furthermore, please see my point above of my real example on one WG, it happends in IETF that they discuss issues out side the lists/meetings and then the results of such TEAM/SIDE/HIDDEN meeting is not given (can be forgotten, because most are bussy, which is always the excuse that can be used) to the community, but an announced-action is done/listed resulting from such hidden-discussion (i.e. unlisted).
AB